Wednesday, November 25, 2015

New Article At FutureOfSex: Sex in 2115 - Biohacking Bodies and Turning Ourselves into Sexual Cyborgs

This is very, very, very cool: my brand new article just went live on the great FutureOfSex site.

Check out by thoughts on the genitals of the future here.


Welcome to Human Body 2.0

Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the basic operations of both the new and improved physical structure as well as the operating system.

The first things you may have noticed are the major improvements to the physical sexual perimeters (i.e. the genitals). Don’t be alarmed. Rest assured that not only will they perform just like the previous versions, but they have been totally redesigned to improve just about every aspect of erotic pleasure.

Oh, and don’t forget to agree to the Terms and Conditions.

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Predicting the future is, at best, hit and miss; mostly a lot of misses to a very few hits.

But that’s never stopped me before. So, after looking at a few of the remarkable innovations that have recently appeared, I’ve tried to speculate on the hot new bodies we all could be wearing in the next hundred or so years.

And, naturally, as this is Future of Sex, I’ll be paying particular attention to the erotic fun all of us might be having with our new bodies.

Elizabeth Coldwell Likes Skin Effect!

This is so touching - check out this lovely review my pal, Elizabeth Coldwell, did for my new collection of erotic science fiction stories, Skin Effect: More Science Fiction And Fantasy Erotica

A woman with the ability to perfect memories – or erase them from the mind forever – offers help to people who can’t escape their past. A man tries to avenge his family’s death, and finds only a loving welcome from his bitterest enemy. And a number of friends enjoy a group sex experience in which their minds as well as their bodies become fused… 
In his second collection of high-concept science fiction and fantasy erotica, Skin Effect, M. Christian takes aspects of current technology – spectacles that enable the wearer to instantly connect to a world of data, smart fabrics, video blogging, the lurking spectre of cybercrime – and takes it to its logical extension. The characters in these stories have access to all manner of cutting edge devices, enabling them to move through time or transition their bodies, and Christian uses this overarching them to explore how this might affect love and sex. If you could routinely change from male to female, wear clothing that would adapt to suit your mood and aid seduction, or relive in perfect detail time spent with a lost lover, however painful it might prove, would you do it? And if so, would you be prepared for any unexpected consequences? 
Skin Effect isn’t an easy read. The stories are written in a style that requires close attention to extract the nuances of the text, and you may not grasp all the implications of a scenario on first reading. But as you’d expect from an M. Christian anthology, they drip with eroticism and the many and varied sexual couplings are lusciously described. If you’re looking for thought-provoking erotica that’s both cerebral and sensual, this is the collection for you.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Blast From The Past: Cynthia Ward's Locus Online Review of Bachelor Machine!


In celebration of the re-release of my erotic science fiction collection, Bachelor Machine  and the follow-up collection, Skin Effect, here's Cynthia Ward's amazing review of Bachelor from Locus Online.

FORBIDDEN THOUGHTS: REGARDING AN EROTIC SF COLLECTION BY M.CHRISTIAN 

In the 1980s, I read an article about some noted visionaries of the bold future of virtual reality. The visionaries uniformly denied that virtual sex would be a factor in this brave new technology. Apparently the visionaries hadn't noticed that several existing technologies were significantly subsidized by sex, among them the phone companies (by 900 numbers), Big Pharma (by The Pill), and the new videotape industry (by X-rated sales and rentals). Here in the Twenty-First Century, though we're still waiting for VR, phone companies enjoy the additional subsidy of surfers seeking X-rated websites, penile implants and Viagra keep multinational medical companies big in the stock market, and video stores add X-rated DVDs.

SF authors are bolder, or maybe just less blind, than the VR visionaries; they routinely incorporate varieties of cybersex in their fiction. But SF authors rarely center plot and theme on sex, and the professional and semiprofessional SF magazines rarely publish speculative sex stories. Yet the enormous sexual changes of the last few years, both trivial (porn spam) and profound (legalized gay/lesbian marriage in Canada), demand more SF exploration of the subject. Fortunately, on the small-press margins of SF, at the border shared with the erotica genre, a few writers are speculating intelligently and imaginatively about the future of sex. Among the best-known and best of the erotic-SF writers is M.Christian.

The stories in his new collection, The Bachelor Machine, pass the litmus tests of both the SF and erotica genres. Take out the tech and there's no story; take out the sex and there's no story. This description may lead those unfamiliar with SF erotica to suspect that every story is about getting off with the aid of futuristic technologies, and that's true as far as it goes. But that's not going nearly far enough.

The stories in The Bachelor Machine are not about sex, though they're stuffed with sexual acts; the stories are about what sex means. M.Christian is writing about the psychology of being human, and he often does so by exploring sexual possibilities and realities that are rarely discussed, even in private conversation. He not only thinks forbidden thoughts, he extrapolates them in the finest SF fashion.

The aptly named "Technophile" pushes technofetishism to the ultimate as it explicates an idea most authors (especially male authors) would never imagine, let alone write about. To put it bluntly, "Technophile" eroticizes castration. A character has his penis cut off and replaced with the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art "Long Thrust." Another character wants to lose his virginity to the technological phallus, which he sees as hotter and better than the old-fashion flesh kind. But the cutting-edge implant needs a recharge and remains limp throughout the encounter, a bitter irony.

In the decaying post-industrial future of "Winged Memory", Dusk does something most people couldn't imagine, and would find horrifying if they did: he sells (and loses) his memory of losing his virginity. He does this to buy thirty minutes with a prostitute "walking the street, eyes available red." To have her again, Dusk keeps selling memories, until he doesn't know who he is, or who this woman is that he inexplicably wants.

The stories "Bluebelle" and "Skin-Effect" break taboo by making explicit the sexual undercurrents of the savagery and killing in nearly every Hollywood cop and military action flick.

In "Guernica", several individuals meet secretly in a basement to enjoy sex acts outlawed by a repressive Twenty-First-Century government. Their practices, costumes, and toys deliberately, ironically, terrifyingly recreate the uniforms, actions, and tools of the cops who would arrest and punish – and kill – them.

In "Butterfliequot;, a hacker immersed in the full-sensory, Disney-perfect Glade of the Datasea finds herself assaulted – literally – by a flock of beautiful butterfly-sprites. I generally hate stories about rape/violation, yet Christian's skill, imagery, and insight kept me reading to the end ... and I never felt violated by the story. It's an impressive achievement.

In "Hackwork", Rosselyn Moss works for ExpressTaxi as a body that cyber-riders hire to carry their consciousness around New Orleans. They dictate her actions and, inevitably, drive her body into sexual encounters. One night, she is distressed to find herself whipping a beautiful young stranger – and even more distressed to discover the stranger loves it.

Like Rosselyn, the narrator of "Switch" is a rent girl. She isn't a taxi, but she may have an even more troubling job, for she never remembers who her clients were, or what they did to her. M.Christian travels deep into taboo territory by demonstrating that, for some, being so thoroughly controlled, so completely owned as to remember nothing, is the ultimate turn-on.

In "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", Justine Moor is a whore with a deeply creepy specialty. She's been turned into "a hardwired dead girl, a chilling and stiffening hooker", dying over and over for money. If this bleeding-edge cyberpunk extrapolation isn't disturbing enough, Justine finds herself lying, a motionless but fully-conscious corpse, in an ambulance staffed by a necrophiliac. (In case it's not already abundantly clear, some stories in The Bachelor Machine are not intended to arouse.)

Many of M.Christian's grittily urban stories are cyberpunk; "Heartbreaker" pushes the form to a logical extreme. When an undercover cop sets up the bust of an outlaw biohacker, the two women don't just have sex, they withdraw very special interface cables from inside themselves and connect them: "Linked, each hardwired into the other's genitals, mixed and matched, they surged and merged."

In "Thin Dog", fans jack their minds into a full-sensory experience of what it's like to be superstar reactor-rock band Thin Dog. Members Johnna, Paul, Georgina, and Jingo (ahem) play instruments that are nanotech implants woven through their bodies; playing includes on-"stage" couplings and quadruplings.

Some stories not only share 1980s-cyberpunk's fascination with Japanese culture, but show the influence of "anime" (Japanese animation). In many ways, the woman and situation in "State" are ideal for anime. The prostitute Fields lives in Japan and earns her living by pretending to be an almost mythically superior Japanese-made sex android. Her masquerade must always achieve perfection – from biochemically lowered body temperature, to "incredibly durable bonding polymer" applied daily to every millimeter of flesh, to behavior in orgasm – because her clients must never suspect she's human.

Not every story is cyberpunk. "The New Motor" is an amusing steampunk entertainment set in Paul Di Filippo territory. Nineteenth-Century spiritualist John Murray Spear has a vision of "the Association of Electricizers ... spirits with a mechanical turn of mind," and begins proselytizing for the creation of "the Physical Savior of the Race ... the New Motor!" This charismatic messiah for "a new Age of Man Through Machine" leads his followers to transcendentalist New England, where they settle in the conservative town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Seducing and neglecting a particularly fervent follower proves seer Spear is dangerously blind to certain human truths.

The collection has some flaws. Some futures don't seem entirely plausible (a minor problem, and one hardly confined to the erotic-SF subgenre). A couple of stories are vague in their SFnal elements. I never quite figured out what "Bluebelle" was (a micro Death Star? a flying fembot? a round mecha?). It takes too long to learn what the futuristic technology is and does in "Eulogy". The endings of "Eulogy" and "Winged Memory" left me wondering just what was happening. And frustratingly, the book provides no copyright data, providing no information about if or when the stories were previously published.

M.Christian's prose is strong and supple and sometimes lyrical. If you don't like naughty language or graphic descriptions of sex, you'd better steer clear of his work. But if you like smart, taboo-breaking SF, then read The Bachelor Machine.

–Cynthia Ward, Locus Online (2004)

(Cynthia Ward has published short fiction in Asimov's and numerous anthologies, and has written a monthly market column for Speculations. She has written many reviews for Amazon.com. Her website is at www.cynthiaward.com.)

Monday, November 16, 2015

Wonderful Review Of My New ScIFi Erotica Collection, SKIN EFFECT By Amos Lassen!

This is so very, very, very touching: my great pal Amos Lassen was so kind of post this lovely review of my new scifi erotica collection, Skin Effect: More Science Fiction And Fantasy Erotica (a follow-up to Bachelor Machine - also out in a new edition).

Thanks so much, Amos!

Christian is one of the freshest and most original erotica writer these days. I have been reviewing him for about eight years now and every time he sends me something new, it is a surprise. “Skin Effect” is the sequel to “The Bachelor Machine” that I reviewed some time ago and that that really showed the skills of the author. I asked myself then whether he would ever be able to top that and he has. ”Skin Effect” is a new collection of short stories that both stun the reader and arouse his/her libido. Christian breaks the rules here—his erotica is innovative and totally original. He goes beyond bondage and sado-masochism, he continues past fetish kind and arrives at a new spot and possibly a new genre in erotic literature. He writes of the here and now and of the future as he explores the nth degree of sex and arousal. Below are the titles of some of the stories included here: 
“[Title Forgotten]”
“Prêt-À-Porter”
“The Subsequent State”
“The Bell House Invitation”
“The Potter’s Wheel”
“Double Toil And Trouble”
“A Kiss Goodnight” and M. Christian gives us an informative and thoughtful afterword. 
In this book’s precursor, “The Bachelor Machine” that I reviewed several years ago, we had dark erotic stories of desperate individuals. Now, this new collection is more hopeful and that seems to be because of new technologies that include data that streams constantly, sensors that are worn, the cloud that now called the media-sphere and that allows for every thought and action to be available to everyone. Add to that that a human being is looked upon solely based on the number of people who follow him/here electronically. Quite naturally, what comes out of all this can be different for different people and there has not yet been any evaluation as to whether or not this is good for the people. It seems to me that we are asking the same questions today. Does technology challenge individualism and make our lives open books and if so, it this good for us? Memory here becomes fluid and can be changed or done away with at will. Sex is affected also in that gender indeed becomes fluid and be changed at will. 
We have the example in one of the stories that a character buys a piece of clothing that becomes whatever the wearer wants it to be and therefore is suitable for all occasions.
I can certainly see how what is written here can be upsetting but we must never lose sight that what we are reading is fiction and this is not necessarily how things will be (but we said the same thing about Dick Tracy’s watch way back then). I found the stories to be charming but also, without exception, highly erotic even though this is not quite the kind of erotica that we are used to. The writing and the erotica are both raunchy (for lack of a better word) and hallucinatory and the stories arouse us while at the same makes us worry about what the future may bring. 
I am not much of an erotica reader except in the cases of M. Christian and a couple of others and that is because I concentrate more on the writing than on the sex. I must say that M. Christian is one of the most inventive writers I have ever read and when we combine with good plots, we become more than satisfied with what he has to say. He manages to take us into the future in exciting, provocative ways yet the does not lose sight of how important sex is in our lives.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Up Now @ FutureOFSex: Dressing for Tomorrow: How Designers Are Mixing Technology, Eroticism and Fashion

I am having a real blast writing for the great folks at FutureOfSex ... and I'm very pleased that a brand new piece just went live there.

Click here to read Dressing for Tomorrow: How Designers Are Mixing Technology, Eroticism and Fashion!

When not protecting the wearer against the weather—or in some cases other humans—clothing has always been about sex.

While materials came and went, the basic idea of fashion has stuck around. From power ties to high heels, corsets to tuxedos, jockeys to hot pants, we’ve forever been trying to accentuate, or downplay, certain parts of our anatomy.

But now it looks like things will really be changing. Frequently using what is called intelligent clothing or e-textiles, a few innovative designers are exploring wild new territories—and perhaps giving us a glimpse of the erotic fashions for the next century.

Anouk Wipprecht

To put it overly simple, technology plus fashion, plus sensuality, equals Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht.

One of her designs called the ParticleDress, embraces the open-source movement: where all kinds of technologies are being made available for anyone to tweak or play with.

Basically, she created a 3D printed framework/garment that supports a standardized hexagonal ‘module’—then she reached out to creative people all over the world, inviting them to design their very own modules to be attached to the dress. The final selection of these submissions then made it into the final design, unveiled at the San Francisco Maker Faire in May of this year.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Up Now @ FutureOFSex: The Sexual Future of 2015 - What Sci-Fi Movies and Books Got Wrong… and Right

I'm having a serious blast writing for the great folks at FutureOfSex- and a brand new post of mine just went live!

Check out The Sexual Future of 2015: What Sci-Fi Movies and Books Got Wrong… and Right!

It was a fun to write and (hopefully) just as fun to read!
Today may not be the future these works envisioned, but maybe it’s still to come?

Science fiction has never really strived to be prophetic. Mostly the genre has used speculation to draw attention to social issues of the day; a funhouse mirror held up to mankind.

And when it has tried to gaze into a crystal ball, sci-fi’s track record is more than a bit lacking—to be polite.

Especially in regards to the future of sexuality.

Now that we are actually living in 2015—and with 2016 right around the corner—it’s fun to look at some notable books and films that tried to envision what sex would be like in the future. In other words, right this very minute.

A lot of things turned out to be flat out wrong. But what’s even more intriguing—and even more than a bit chilling—is what they actually may have gotten right.

If not this year but very, very soon.

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

A. F. Waddell's Sweet Blurb About Skin Effect!

Check out this very touching blurb from my great pal, A. F. Waddell, for my new erotic science fiction collection Skin Effect: More Science Fiction And Fantasy Erotica:

M.Christian masterfully creates future sexuality in speculative fiction. The new collection Skin Effect is a fine example of the author’s ability to realistically blend genres. Skin Effect is a super imaginative, fascinating and sexy read! – A. F. Waddell